Media vs. Propaganda

by thatguitarman
July 16, 2009
Posted at YouTube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_aTbznZDT0

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Sibel Edmonds gave a sworn deposition in which she testified to her knowledge of treasonous crimes and corruption involving current and former members of Congress and State and Defense Dept. officials. Given the nature of the deposition, the lines of questioning focused on Turkish espionage and services obtained through bribery and blackmail by Turkish officials and proxies. However, Edmonds has previously disclosed that the corruption involving U.S. officials also includes money laundering, trafficking in drugs, arms and nuclear secrets, U.S. support for Bin Laden/Al Qaeda, and obstruction of FBI investigations related to 9/11, before and after the attacks; she said these things came up “briefly” during the deposition. Edmonds learned of these things from wiretaps she listened to while working as a translator for the FBI in 2001-2002.

Edmonds’ Aug 8 testimony was subpoenaed by David Krikorian (Democratic 2010 Congressional candidate- OH) to support his defense against a lawsuit brought by Jean Schmidt, R-OH. Krikorian had circulated a flier in his 2008 campaign in which he alleged that Schmidt had accepted “blood money” from Turkish interests in exchange for opposing a Congressional resolution acknowledging the Turkish genocide of Armenians in World War I. The deposition took place in Washington, DC at the headquarters… Continue reading →

A special on 9/11 has just been shown on the National Geographic Channel, produced by Robert Erickson. Robert also conducted interviews with me and others. In March 2009, Prof. David Ray Griffin and I and Gregg Roberts exchanged emails with Robert Erickson which demonstrate our efforts to get Mr. Erickson and his team to be accurate and fair in their treatment of our scientific work regarding 9/11 — particularly the evidence for the use of explosives in the World Trade Center destruction. For the record, then, I have pulled together our exchanges of emails.

Robert Erickson, emailed David Ray Griffin on 3/27/09:
“if Jones is surprised that we just placed bags of thermite around the column…what else would Jones have suggested? ”

I was informed of the question above and I responded on 3/28/09 as follows:

Robert,

Bags of commercial thermite set against a steel column — what a pathetic “experiment.” Not anywhere close to representing my views, as you must know, from our discussion about the red/gray chips and the crucial distinction between ordinary thermite and super-thermite! What a terrible and unfair straw-man joke you are evidently trying to pull.

Why can’t you get a sample of super-thermite? I think you can, if you will actually try. Or are you like NIST which refuses to look?

A key senior figure in a Bush administration covert Pentagon program, which used retired military analysts to produce positive wartime news coverage, remains in his same position today as a chief Obama Defense Department spokesman and the agency’s head of all media operations.

In an examination of Pentagon documents the New York Times obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request — which reporter David Barstow leveraged for his April 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose on the program — Raw Story has found that Bryan Whitman surfaces in over 500 emails and transcripts, revealing the deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations was both one of the program’s senior participants and an active member.

Whitman’s conspicuous presence in these records is notwithstanding thousands of documented communications the Bush Pentagon released but for which names were redacted and an untold number the prior administration successfully withheld after its two-year legal battle with the Times.

Barstow’s Times expose revealed a comprehensive, covert Pentagon campaign — beginning during the lead-up to the Iraq War and continuing through 2008 — that shaped network military analysts into what internal documents referred to as “message force multipliers” and “surrogates” who could be trusted to parrot Bush administration talking points “in the form of their own opinions.” Barstow’s reporting also detailed how most of the military analysts, traditionally viewed as authoritative and independent, had ties to defense contractors with a stake in the same war policies they were interpreting… Continue reading →

This is something you have not yet seen in any US media. French independent media La Télé Libre interviews two of the most prominent 9/11 truth activists, Cynthia McKinney and Niels Harrit. To understand the context of the interview, you need to know what is happening in France right now, because 9/11 is surely becoming a hot topic.

A year ago, French comedian Jean-Marie Bigard publicly questioned the official 9/11 story on a popular TV show and said a new investigation is needed. That was enough for him to be called a revisionist by a myriad of journalists and he even received many death threats along the way. Nine months later, Bigard came back on the topic, but this time he went as far as creating 11 videos in which he uses humor to ask questions about disturbing elements of the 9/11 Commission report. He is invited on several TV shows to talk about this and each time he gets vilified by journalists.

Recently, actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz also questioned the foundations of the official version of 9/11 in another TV show. He got the same treatment from the French press.

Both Mathieu Kassovitz and Jean-Marie Bigard will debate this hot topic on France 2 this October 28th (we will post a video of this show as soon as we receive it). Originally, France 2 was supposed to air a debate including two other people who also question the official story: Éric Laurent… Continue reading →

The Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General is conducting a new investigation into a covert Bush administration Defense Department program that used retired military analysts to produce positive wartime news coverage.

Last May, the Inspector General’s office rescinded and repudiated a prior internal investigation’s report on the retired military analyst program, which had been issued by the Bush administration, because it “did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product.” Yet in recent interviews with Raw Story, Pentagon officials who took part in the program were still defending it by referencing this invalidated report.

Gary Comerford, Inspector General spokesman for the Defense Department, told Raw Story last week that his office is conducting an investigation into the retired military analyst program and confirmed that the investigation began during the summer.

Asked when his office expects to conclude the investigation, Comerford said, “As a matter of policy we do not set deadlines since any number of variables or factors could result in a delay.”

He did confirm that investigators in his office have read Raw Story’s recent articles on the topic.

Congressman John F. Tierney (D-MA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, issued a press release (cache link) this past June, announcing that Pentagon Inspector General Gordon Heddell had begun the new investigation.

Our 911TruthStore is closing soon. Please have a look at what’s left in inventory, and if you are interested in any of these items and wish to give them as gifts or share with family at the holidays, order right away.The deadline for pre-Christmas delivery is 12/16 if you wish to use Priority Mail; 12/23 if you pay for USPS overnight shipping.

There is one more item available, in addition to what’s at the store … we have just received a few brand new copies of Kristina Borjesson’s excellent 2004 book, “Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press”. Although I’ve not yet added it to the store website, they are available. Please email me to order, with BOOK ORDER in the subject line. If you’re wondering why we can’t “break through” the corporate media, you’ll understand clearly after reading this expose! The book description follows below.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

Editor’s (Borjesson) Note: While working in what has been, arguably, the most difficult reporting environment in recent times, CBS’s Dan Rather chose to speak out frankly to BBC Newsnight correspondent Madeleine Holt about the serious and dangerous constraints that he and his colleagues have experienced in the post-9/11 era. I know of no other working broadcast journalist of Rather’s long experience and stature who has been willing to go on the record in such a significant way about these matters.

No amount of spit and polish can clean the tarnish of the 9/11 attacks from the Bush legacy, but that didn’t stop GOP strategist Mary Matalin from trying.

During a Sunday appearance on CNN, Matalin attempted to prop up an analogy between the first year of George W. Bush’s presidency and that of President Barack Obama’s. Raising the specter of rising unemployment, anchor John King wondered whether Republicans have the right to attack Democrats over the economy.

According to a CNN transcript, Matalin–seated across a table from her husband, Democratic strategist James Carville–gave a response which was a little more than blindly partisan.

“I was there,” she said. “We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history. And President Bush dealt with it. And within a year of his presidency at this comparable time, unemployment was at 5 percent. And we were creating jobs.”

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 happened during the Bush presidency. While administration officials said repeatedly that nobody could have predicted such a devastating attack, an August 6, 2001, briefing delivered to President Bush — titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” — later surfaced.

“The memo, sent to FBI headquarters by a Phoenix FBI agent, warned that bin Laden could have been using U.S. flight schools to train terrorists and suggested a nationwide canvass for Middle… Continue reading →

Hyperreality is the inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Corporate media, Fox in particular, offers news that creates a hyperreality of real world problems and issues. Consumers of corporate television news–especially those whose understandings are framed primarily from that medium alone–are embedded in a state of excited delirium and knowinglessness.

Corporate Media hasn’t acted as a cohesive, protective “fourth estate” in several decades, instead gilding lilies such as the Iraq war, torture and the true extent of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. Contemporary corporate news is best seen in a post-modern context of hyperreality. The news from US networks is based on the presentations of partially factual stories framed inside socio-emotional story lines that juxtapose “evil” with patriotism and Christian fervor. There are multiple examples of this, but we will examine two distinct cases.

The bias towards hyperreality inherent in modern media is so rampant, consumers only need turn on the TV to be exposed to the spin. Two notorious, controversial modern figures will be examined here to explain what we mean by a hyperreality of knowinglessness. News coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh are unique examples, primarily because of their perceived opposing views and their unapparent similarities. But they are similar in that both should have little operable relevance to American policy, at least domestically, as one is an entertainer and the other is the leader of another country.…

What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida’s expertise in pulling off 9/11.

If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida “mastermind” behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.

After such amazing success, al-Qaida would have attracted the best minds in the business, but, instead, it has been reduced to amateur stunts.

The Underwear Bomb plot is being played to the hilt on the TV media and especially on Fox “news.” After reading recently that The Washington Post allowed a lobbyist to write a news story that preached the lobbyist’s interest, I wondered if the manufacturers of full body scanners were behind the heavy coverage of the Underwear Bomber, if not behind the plot itself. In America, everything is for sale. Integrity is gone with the wind.

Recently I read a column by an author who has a “convenience theory” about the Underwear Bomber being a Nigerian allegedly trained by al-Qaida in Yemen.…

A January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security established that US intelligence agencies stopped the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, whom US officials suspected of being affiliated with the Yemeni terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day. Revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa would have prevented him from boarding the airplane.

The hearing was reported in a brief article posted January 27 on the web site of the Detroit News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger Investigation.”

The revelation that US intelligence agencies made a deliberate decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board the commercial flight, without any special airport screening, has been buried in the media. As of this writing, nearly a week after the hearing, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have published no articles on the subject. Nor have the broadcast or cable media reported on it.

This is despite–or perhaps more accurately, because of–the fact that this information exposes the official government story of the near-disaster to be a lie. President Obama, who has joined with top US intelligence, FBI and Homeland Security officials to insist that Abdulmutallab was inadvertently allowed to board the plane carrying explosives because of a failure to “connect the dots,” has… Continue reading →

Originally published by Brad Friedman on February 6, 2010 at Bradblog.com

You’re welcome. My 2000+ word article on former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds is now featured in the March 2010 edition of Hustler. Sorry, she’s wearing all her clothes. Go buy it anyway.

The article brings the story of Edmonds, who was twice-gagged by the Bush Administration‘s outrageous use/abuse of the “States Secrets Privilege,” fully up to date following her naming of names, finally, under oath, in remarkable testimony last summer. (Some of those names: Hastert, Burton, Blunt, Lantos, Schakowsky, Wolfowitz, Perle, Grossman, etc.)

The Hustler piece, “Sibel Edmonds: The Traitors Among Us,” also explores reasons for the perhaps-even-more-remarkable complete avoidance of her 4-hour, detailed, video-taped testimony by the corporate media (Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative magazine excepted, if you consider them to be “corporate media”) concerning allegations of blackmail of sitting U.S. Congressmembers, the theft and sale of nuclear secrets to the foreign blackmarket, and other allegations of treasonous activities by top State and Defense Department officials over the last decade or more, as we have covered in great detail here at The BRAD BLOG over the years, as the story has unfolded.

So there’s your latest excuse to go buy Hustler. While you’re at the newsstand, please pick up a copy of the February issue of Maxim as well, featuring Simon Worrall’s feature article on the formerly-‘censored’ story of the mysterious death of GOP IT guru Mike Connell, as detailed in our… Continue reading →

In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account.

Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a “conspiracy theory” ignoring science and common sense.

This essay presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies.

Eight countries — Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Russia — have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11.

This more open approach taken in the international media — I could also have included the Japanese media — might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks — a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The evidence now being explored in the international media may pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country’s foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge.

“Burying” the Truth: Nightline Reporter Channels Bill O’Reilly and Does a Hatchet Job

In a sad commentary on the currently disintegrating state of “main stream media”, I found myself ambushed on Saturday, March 6th, just ten minutes after I arrived at a conference outside Philadelphia on “9-11, the Wars and Our Broken Constitution”.

When young, smiling female producer Katie Hinman identified herself as being with ABC and asked for an interview, I had only just arrived at the conference. So although I was a little surprised that the Nightline TV crew was there, I immediately consented to an interview before anyone had a chance to warn me that the TV show was trying to concoct a connection between the conference and the mentally ill young man who had been killed a few days before while shooting at Pentagon guards.

From the very first question Mr. Bury launched, it was clear, however, that he was not interested in the truth, and that I would not fare any better than someone who consents to go on Bill O’Reilly’s or Glenn Beck’s show.

In the interest of journalistic ethics, let me list a few of the departures from how a decent, ethical, objective journalist would have covered the story of this conference:

1) Chris Bury and his news crew left right after interviewing me. They apparently only spent a couple hours at the conference that morning (before I arrived) and did… Continue reading →

Ventura had posted an item on Tuesday which took note of a recent conference at which “more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.” He also quoted a few paragraphs from his new book, American Conspiracies, to explain why some of those experts see signs of controlled demolition.

The item was featured on the front page of Huffington Post when it first went up, but after a few hours it vanished. All that appears now at its original location is an editor’s note saying, “The Huffington Post’s editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories — including those about 9/11. As such, we have removed this post.”

The note is followed by three pages of comments, enthusiastically arguing the pros and cons of controlled demolition and other 9/11 theories, that were posted during the couple of hours before the entry was deleted and comments were closed.

Huffington Post’s own guidelines for its bloggers state, “We must — and do — reserve the right to remove objectionable, inaccurate,… Continue reading →

By John Bursill, Engineer, 9/11 Truth Advocate and Researcher 911Truth.org

On April 12th, 2010 ABC Radio National’s “Counterpoint” host Michael Duffy decided to weigh in on the truth of the 9/11 events. In this clearly biased and ludicrous attack on those who would question the still unexplained events of September 11, 2001, Duffy demonstrated he has done little research into the matter. Seemingly, he has decided research is neither warranted nor required to make wild assumptions about and apply derogatory labels to 9/11 researchers and their questions.

In this short and emotive hit piece Duffy uses an excerpt from a recent lecture given by Clive Williams, Adjunct Professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University (ANU), to provide the spin. Professor Williams lays out an overview of the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories as part of his lecture called “Terrorism Conspiracy Theories and the 1978 Sydney Hilton bombings, Lockerbie, 9/11 and the London 7/7 bombings”. This lecture will be played in full on Radio National’s “Big Ideas” on Sunday 18th April at 5pm and is available in podcast at the ABC. In this excerpt Williams skims over the evidence of an alternate “conspiracy”, citing the predictable “straw man” arguments and loose journalistic attempts to look at the evidence, using the Discovery Channel’s laughable documentary, “9/11: Science and Conspiracy” as a reference. Ironically, Williams uses these absurdities ignorantly in his attempt to debunk the experts who are actually qualified to comment on such matters, and — surprise, surprise… Continue reading →

At 5:21 PM on 9/11, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been hit by a plane — a fact that is important because of the widespread acceptance of the idea, in spite of its scientific absurdity, that the Twin Towers collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airliners plus the ensuing jet-fuel-fed fires. The collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7) thereby challenges the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, according to which it was accomplished by al-Qaeda hijackers, even if one accepts the government’s scientifically impossible account of the Twin Towers. This fact was recently emphasized in the title of a review article based on my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7, 1 by National Medal of Science-winner Lynn Margulis: “Two Hit, Three Down — The Biggest Lie.” 2

1. Why the Collapse of WTC 7 Created an Extraordinary Problem

The collapse of WTC 7 created an extraordinary problem for the official account of 9/11 for several reasons.

An Unprecedented Occurrence

One reason is that, because of the collapse of WTC 7, the official account of 9/11 includes the dubious claim that, for the first time in the known universe, a steel-frame high-rise building was brought down by fire, and science looks askance at claims of unprecedented occurrences regarding physical phenomena. New York Times writer James Glanz, who himself has a Ph.D. in physics, wrote: “[E]xperts… Continue reading →